Looking Back: The Top Ten Physics Newsmakers of the Decade
January 1st brought not only a new year but an entire new decade. Usually in this issue, APS News looks back over the biggest news stories of the last 12 months. However, with the dawning of a new decade we wanted to take time this issue and highlight not just the biggest physics newsmakers of 2009, but the biggest physics newsmakers of the last ten years. These are the stories that may or may not have the most lasting physical significance, and may or may not have had the most impact within... (View original article)
BBC News – Time travel: Light speed results cast fresh doubts
26 July 2011
Last updated at 05:46 ET
Physicists have confirmed the ultimate speed limit for the packets of light called photons - making time travel even less likely than thought.
The speed of light in vacuum is the Universe's ultimate speed limit, but experiments in recent years suggested that single photons might beat it.
If they could, theory allows for the prospect of time travel.
Now, a paper in Physical Review Letters shows that ind... (View original article)
Lost 1967 Spaceship Found Crashed on Dark Side of Moon? – FoxNews.com
Scientists may have just found a lost 1967 spacecraft that took “the picture of the century” before crashing on the Moon.
The Lunar Orbiter 2 was sent to the moon to map out possible landing sites for the Apollo missions, and although its efforts weren't the most successful, the spacecraft made its mark in history for taking a photograph of the lunar surface (shown above) widely considered the “picture of the century.”
NASA intentional crashed the ... (View original article)
Technology News: Emerging Tech: Scientists Untangle Tough Quantum Computing Knot
New research may provide the answers to overcoming one of the biggest obstacles standing in the way of the development of quantum computing: quantum decoherence. The experiment used molecular magnets, which suppress extrinsic decoherence. Extrinsic decoherence was reduced to the point where it was no longer observable, said USC's Susumu Takahashi.
A team of scientists has achieved what might prove to be a breakthrough in quantum computing.
The group has managed to partially ... (View original article)
Inscentinel Honeybees Sniff For Explosives: Science Fiction in the News
Inscentinel Honeybees Sniff For Explosives
Inscentinel Ltd. has found a way to use honeybees as sensitive, chemical-trace-detecting micromachines. The bees are first trained and then literally harnessed into a special cassette to aid in the process of biochemical molecular recognition.
(Inscentinel honebees at work)
Honeybees are trained to recognize particular odors (for example, that of explosive compounds), and then ... (View original article)
New Laser Technology Could Revolutionize Communications | Stevens Institute of Technology
As fiber optic technology continues to advance, it faces challenges from both its physical properties and its use of infrastructure. One emerging high-speed solution being developed at
Stevens Institute of Technologyuses lasers to transmit data through readily available open space, with the potential of expanding past the limitation of fibers into a system known as optical free space communications.
Dr. Rainer Martini
has overcome a number of free space challeng... (View original article)
Singularity Nothing Unusual Except
This is the extended abstract of an article that you cannot read anywhere prominent, which ensures that one can later claim “nobody could have possibly foreseen as the relevant literature clearly shows …” (here more on why). The article clarifies the singularity concept’s terminology and then goes on to criticize the concept itself, finishing with the only type of "singularity" that actually should be expected.
Singularity: Nothing Unusual Exc... (View original article)
We May Not Live in a Hologram After All : Discovery News
You may remember the hubbub that a Fermilab physicist caused last year when he started to investigate some strange results coming from the GEO600 gravitational wave experiment.
In a nutshell, GEO600 -- a mindbogglingly sensitive piece of kit -- started to detect what particle physicist Craig Hogan interpreted as quantum "fuzziness." This fuzziness, or blurriness on the smallest possible scales, could be interpreted as evidence for the "holographic universe" hypothesis.
A... (View original article)
(Study looks at ‘controlled’ forgetting – UPI.com
LUND, Sweden, July 5 (UPI) -- Researchers in Sweden say a new study shows we can train ourselves to forget by controlling and intentionally forgetting unwanted memories.
The assumption that we can control our forgetfulness has been controversial ever since Freud asserted it at the beginning of the 20th century, but researcher Gerd Thomas Waldhauser of Lund University says Freud was correct.
In the same way as we can control our motor impulses -- for example instructing the ... (View original article)